That's Right, I'm A Chef!

The blog of Ben Storkamp. Alleged chef, part-time diehard Twins fan, full time television connoisseur.
Known authority on Freshy Freshington, Harold Dieterle and Hells Kitchen.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

King Kong

Okayyyyyyyyy......this movie is seriously being talked up as a Best Picture candidate and I'd love to know why. YF and I saw it today and we had just a few quibbles with it.

- Really, I have no problem suspending my disbelief to a certain degree while watching a movie. But come on. Everyone should have been killed about four seconds into that brontosaurus stampede. And as YF pointed out, how did a pack of brontasauruses even survive on that little island, surrounded by hordes of T-Rexes and raptors?

- The ships captain and his crew are apparently expert wild game collectors. This explains the crate of machine guns they keep on board. Maybe they collect pieces of wild game?

- Speaking of capturing wild game, when the crew attempts to capture Kong, I was wondering, shouldn't they be a little less stingy with the chloroform? Jeez captain, you got a whole crate full of it. "Okay men, now we just want to make him sort of drowsy! So only use one bottle! This stuff is expensive!"

- And when they did finally knock him out, I was wondering, how the heck are they planning on getting him back to civilization? Their genius plan? Just do a cut scene to New York. Problem solved!

- The scene where Kid Whatshisname grabs a tommy gun and shoots the bugs off Adrian Brody? Cripes, they wouldn't try that in an Arnold Schwarzenegger action-comedy. But this is a best picture contender???

- Whats'hername really pissed me off too. "No, don't kill him" she cries at various times, as sailors, cops, or soldiers try to stop Kong on one of his destructive rampages. Meanwhile the the big ape is biting off some poor schmucks head and dashing his carcasss against a wall. Yeah bitch, just let him get the killing out of his system, then he can devote all his time to you and your future kids.

- Damn it Kong, stop ice skating and just climb the damn building and die already. Ice skating. Sheesh. And where did those soldiers come from? The US army would have been absolutely tiny at the time, but within five minutes of Kong breaking out the street is full of machine gun and bazooka toting jeeps. I know, I know I'm way overthinking this, but crap like this bugs me for some reason.

- Aren't you glad you put on your tuxedo to watch a very large ape sit there on stage? I couldn't help but think of the Simpsons Halloween parody, "What kind of show have you got for us Mr Burns?" "Well the big ape is going to sit around for three hours or so..."Then again, most things make me think of the Simpsons in some capacity.

- And finally, the one that really got to me, the one that just put the whole thing over the top... While doing his little pre-unveiling spiel on Broadway, Jack Black mentions how 17 men died during the expedtion. Whatttt?!??!? As YF put it, I think he meant to say, "17 men died during the first two minutes of the expedtion. They were then followed by 143 more." I don't know, this one was just unforgivable to me.

- On the plus side, Kongs fight with the T-Rexes was pretty cool (though he really would have crushed Whats'hername to death about 40 times during the whole thing). And the soldiers taking time out to mug for pictures in front of the fallen Kong was a nice touch. And we watched the movie in the front row of the mezzanine, so we were able to stretch our legs out during the show, which I always appreciate.